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Reception Theory is a term used in a broad sense as a synonym for Reader-response Theory and in a narrower sense as a name for the approach described by literary historian Hans Robert Jauss. Jauss's approach differs from other theories of the reader's response in its...

Recit is a French term used in narratology to denote the narrative text itself, as opposed to plot and narration (the process of telling a story).

Reductionism is the tendency to explain complex phenomena as masked examples of simpler phenomena, as is the tendency to reduce something that is higher to something that is lower. The attempt to interpret the inquiry for truth not as something else but as a thirst...

The spectrum of objects to which the signs refer or point, as opposed to what the signs mean or indicate. The reference to the sign "semioticians" includes Charles Peirce, Ferdinand de Saussure, Charles Morris, Roland Barthes, and many others. These are some of the...

The referent is what the sign (for example, the message) refers to, the object or the spectrum of objects to which the sign is applied. Related: Bedeutung Reference

Relatum is a Latin word for anything that relates to something else. For Ferdinand de Saussure, the sign is in its essence the relation between the signifier and the signified, and thus the signifier and the signifier are Relatum in the sign relation. As semiotics...

Replica is a term meaning the copying or replication of a sign; also a synonym for the sign in question. If marks, traces, sounds, or other perceptual forms (such as Braille) were not replicable or reproducible in replicas, they could not function as signs.  ...

Representamen is a term proposed by Charles S. Peirce to denote a sign in the broadest sense of the word (CP 2.274). Peirce proposed this term because he believed that the English word "sign", like most, if not all, of its equivalents in English and other languages,...

The process in which something stands in place of something else or in which it is presented, depicted, or portrayed in some way, as well as the result of such a process, is called representation. While representation is accepted as the most essential function of the...

Retroduction is a term used by Charles S. Peirce to denote the process of inference in which a hypothesis arises.